I was walking up a hill near our house this morning when the call of a pileated woodpecker stopped me in my tracks. I looked up and saw a tree with yellow leaves so bright they looked electric, and nearby I saw another tree, dead and leafless but pockmarked with the distinctive oval holes drilled only by the larger woodpeckers.
By the time I heard that chattering call, I'd been walking about 40 minutes without much awareness of anything. I've been walking around that way all week, my eyes glazed and turned inward toward the big campus issue everyone's trying to talk about without quite knowing how. How did I get to this point? I remember leaving the house, seeing a heron in our creek and a deer up the road, and then nothing until the woodpecker's call.
I scanned the tree and waited a while but the call didn't repeat. I never saw the woodpecker, but I know it's out there somewhere--and the only way I'll find it is to keep looking out and up.
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